Ways To Avoid Micromanagement

Everyone agrees that micromanagement is a bad thing, but not everyone knows how to identify and correct it.

In my experience, micromanagement manifests itself in the following five avoidable behaviors:

1. Measuring too many things.

The advantage of technology is that you can measure your business more accurately. The disadvantage is that technology makes it too easy to measure too much. Measuring so much that it's not clear what the data really means is classic micromanagement.

What to do instead: For every job, select one or two metrics that define success for that job. Ignore everything else.

2. Monitoring too closely.

Monitoring is sometimes confused with measurement, but the two are different. You measure data; you monitor behavior. Monitoring becomes micromanagement if you're always looking over employees' shoulders.

What to do instead: Let employees request monitoring and coaching when if and when they feel the need to improve their performance.